


Sessions Work

by amythis



Series: Lenny Is a Rock Star [2]
Category: Laverne & Shirley (TV)
Genre: F/M, Other Ships Not Mentioned in Tags
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-11
Updated: 2020-08-23
Packaged: 2021-03-06 01:07:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 4,440
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25841083
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amythis/pseuds/amythis
Summary: Even for a classic-rock podcast, some memories are off limits.  Prequel/sequel toMy Old School.
Relationships: Laverne DeFazio/Lenny Kosnowski
Series: Lenny Is a Rock Star [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1875079
Comments: 51
Kudos: 2
Collections: Lenny is a Rockstar 'Verse





	1. Needing No Introduction

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Missy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Missy/gifts).



Episode 222 of _Clarissa's Classic Rock_ podcast, February 2, 2022:

CLARISSA MEADOWS: Welcome, Everybody, to a very special episode of _Clarissa's Classic Rock._  
MYSTERY GUEST: Oh, it's a message episode.  
CM: Yeah, why do you think they call it dope?  
BACKGROUND VOICE: Hello.  
MG: It is pretty dope to be here, as you kids say.  
CM: Kids don't say that and I'm not exactly a kid.  
BV: You are compared to us, Sister.  
CM: OK, so much for the planned introduction.  
MG: As John Lennon said, life is what happens to you when you're busy making other plans.  
CM: I definitely want to talk to you about Lennon, but first, Ladies and Gentlemen, the man who needs no introduction but I really should get to it before we get started....  
MG: You can cut this all out.  
CM: Actually, the rambling is some listeners' favorite part.  
MG: Then it's a good thing you invited us.  
CM: Definitely. OK, so our mystery guest today is the legendary Lenny Kosnowski, and that background voice is his long-time manager Andrew "Squiggy" Squiggman.  
AS: Am I getting paid for this since the audience can hear me?  
LK: Uh, Squig, this is just for promotion.  
AS: Ten percent of nothin', it figures.  
CM: Sooooo, let me just slap down tracks on wax and get your thoughts.  
AS: I ain't sayin' nothin' if I ain't gettin' paid.  
CM: Good.  
LK: (guffawing) Low blow!  
CM: Anyway.... [A sample of a psychedelic rock number plays.]  
LK: Oh yeah, this takes me back. Velvet Sunset Studio, Los Angeles, the Fall of '67, the Electric Banana Committee....  


"A studio musician?"

"Yeah, I just signed the contract."

"But what about STAB?"

"You can be my manager if you want."

"No, I mean, what happened to you bein' a agent?"

"I think I'm more of a performer."

"Then why not be a front man instead of a side man?"

"I'm too shy."

"Yeah, like you're too shy to make your move now that Shirl's out of the picture."

"Squig, I've proposed to Laverne, three times! Three strikes and I'm out."

"You don't have to marry the dame. Just ask for a little free love."

He didn't bother explaining that he couldn't do that with Laverne. Well, yes, he wanted to make love to, with, and in her, but he would also want to marry her.

He was around her less that Fall, Winter, and Spring, and it helped him, if not get over her, at least be distracted. Being support, being wanted, being paid, these were good things, although the money wasn't much at first, to Squiggy's annoyance.

"Bunch of hippies! Why can't you work for Sinatra or Fabian or anybody I've heard of?"

"I'm just gettin' started. And I like this kind of music...."

LK: I know it's before your time, your audience's time, but it was really exciting to be a part of and I was young, well, sort of.  
CM: You were 29.  
LK: Yeah, but this was the "Don't trust anyone over 30" era, and I was the "old guy" in that studio, someone who was in high school when "Rock Around the Clock" came out.  
CM: I totally want to talk to you about your '50s roots, but can you tell me more about EBC?  
AS: (grumbling) Bunch of hippies.  
LK: Squiggy has mixed feelings about the '60s.  
CM: How do you feel about that tumultuous decade, Lenny?  
LK: It was the best of times, it was the worst of times....


	2. Learning the Blues

[A blues rock instrumental plays in the background.]  
LK: Ah, Chicago, the summer of 1968, Cobalt Studio.  
CM: Right. So were you there for the riot at the Democratic Convention?  
LK: No, just the aftermath....

"Thank you for putting me up until I get settled."

His hostess nodded so that her black beehive bobbed.

"I've got an interview with a studio downtown tomorrow, and even though it's not a style I've played, it's all rock, right?"

"Mm hm."

"I mean, change is good. And if they hire me, if I get enough gigs, I'll get a place of my own. Nothin' fancy. My needs are simple."

She held out a pack of cigarettes.

"Thanks, but I don't smoke."

She nodded, lit a cigarette, and took a puff.

"Not that Chicago is completely new, since I grew up in Milwaukee. But it's different than L.A., and my first time really out on my own, I mean without Squiggy or my family."

She coughed, but apparently not because of the cigarette. In the husky voice that always startled him coming out of that short if rounded body, she asked, "You wanna screw?"

He blinked, then whispered, "You're Squiggy's girl!"

"I'm my own woman. But he said you're heartbroken because the woman you've been in love with forever just got married."

He started crying for the first time since Laverne's wedding day, this time giving in to sobs. His hostess stubbed out her cigarette in a homemade hand-shaped ashtray, then her short arms wrapped around him. She didn't say anything, soothing or otherwise. She let him babble about how he and Laverne had been close but never a couple, and he was happy for her that she found someone.

When his hostess, Francine from Chicago, offered again, he nodded and let her lead him into her bedroom. They didn't talk much in there, but he did say, "I thought you thought I'm weird-looking."

"Weird is in now."

She didn't sweep him off his feet, but she helped him get back on his feet. She gave him enough confidence to bluff his way past the Cobalt audition. She gave him a nicotine addiction and a souvenir ashtray, shaped like her hand when she was seven.

CM: This is my favorite part, where you're in the background, but you're also like this subliminal tug against the song, like a different shade of blues.  
AS: He's picking his heart out, like always.  
LK: I was just jamming and trying to learn without screwing up.  
CM: (chuckling) OK. I do have to ask you something.  
LK: What's that?  
CM: What was up with their name?  
LK: Rack?  
CM: Yeah, when they were alive, every interview I saw with them, they had a different explanation: racks in a record store, torture rack, rack of lamb, nice rack. Rock with an a.  
LK: They told me it meant off the rack, you know, like a suit you don't have altered, but it fits close enough.  
CM: And that name sort of fits.  
AS: Yeah, bunch of deadbeat beatniks who never even had a hit.  
CM: OK, moving on....


	3. Selling Out

THE ARCHIES: Sugar, ah, Honey Honey, you are my candy girl!  
LK: Oh God!  
CM: I told you we'd be discussing your sessions work.  
LK: Yeah, but nobody was supposed to know. I mean, they paid me....  
AS: We still get residuals.  
CM: Lenny?  
LK: I'll tell you if you stop playing it.  
[The song has been playing in the background, but now abruptly shuts off.]  
LK: First of all, I didn't do any singing, just guitar. Calendar Studio, New York City, originally released the spring of 1969 but it didn't hit it big until the late summer, early Fall, after Don Kirshner re-released it on his own label.  
AS: It was everywhere.  
[LK groans in dismay, like it happened recently, rather than over fifty years ago.]  


Lenny groaned in dismay, feeling like the needle was going into his arm rather than moving along vinyl grooves.

Carmine took enough pity on him to turn off the record player, but he said, "That's you, isn't it? Not singing but the guitar."

"How did you know?"

"I've been hearing your guitar since high school, in all kinds of rock & roll. Well, never before soulless bubble gum."

Lenny winced and mumbled, "It's not soulless. It's catchy."

"Yeah, so catchy it sticks to your brain like bubblegum, thanks to that Kosnowski hook you snuck in."

"Um, thanks."

"Len, you're really talented, so why are you wasting it?"

"I'm nothin' special." He reached for his pack of cigarettes.

"Hey, you promised not to smoke inside if I let you move in."

"And you promised you wouldn't nag me about my potential," Lenny muttered.

"Somebody's gotta kick your ass into gear since Laverne isn't around to do it."

Lenny glared at Carmine. "You also promised you weren't gonna talk about her."

Carmine shook his head. "I don't get it. You send her postcards, but you refuse to talk to her on the phone."

"I don't have that much to say to her."

"Since when?"

Since she got married. Since she had a baby. Since he came to New York City, surveyed the vast and diverse music scene, including a chance to audition for the band in the production of _Hair_ Carmine had been in for almost a year, and decided to become a faceless studio musician on a formulaic song for a cartoon rock group.

"I'm gonna go outside and smoke." He climbed out the open window and onto the fire escape. He lit a cigarette and had time for a couple puffs before Carmine stuck his head out.

"You think I don't know what you're going through?"

"Singing telegrams aren't the same thing."

"No, I mean I was crazy about Shirley and I followed her out to California, and she ended up marrying someone else."

Lenny decided not to point out that Shirley was now a widow. He did not wish death or even divorce upon Lee Levy. He wanted to get over Mrs. Levy, and the best way to do that seemed to be to not see or hear her until he was stronger.

"Or are you just embarrassed that you helped make a crappy song?"

"Hey, that crappy song helps pay the rent."

Carmine shook his head, said, "All this time I thought it was Squiggy who only cared about money," and withdrew his head before Lenny could reply.

By the time Lenny finished his cigarette and went back in, Carmine had left for his _Oh! Calcutta!_ audition.

CM: Ron Dante told me, off-mic, when I did my bubblegum rock episode a few years ago.  
LK: The lead Archie?  
CM: Yeah, he said they were lucky to have you, and you should be proud that you were part of a song that still makes people happy.  
AS: And we still get residuals.  
LK: Well, thanks, but a good friend told me at the time that it was soulless crap.  
CM: Well, nobody could say that about this next track....  



	4. Rewriting the Story

[A woman with a strong, sweet voice, somehow a blend of Aretha Franklin and Diana Ross, with something of her own, is singing, "Only till midnight."]  
LK: Mmm. People think this is Motown, but they left Detroit after the '67 riots. This was at Carton, sort of a pun on "Car Town."  
CM: Like Motor City?  
LK: Yeah. The song came out in the summer of 1970 and I played rhythm guitar and a little bit of cowbell.  
CM: What about this in the liner notes, "Thanks for the right words at the right time, Blondie"? I assume she didn't mean Deborah Harry.  
LK: I just made a little suggestion for the lyrics.

"I don't know, this part isn't quite right. 'Only till midnight and the clock's ticking down. Only till midnight and then I'm skipping town.' "

Lenny forgot he was in front of a microphone and murmured, "Only till midnight and the clock's ticking down. Only till midnight and I'm not sticking round." Everyone stared at him, so he mumbled, "Sorry." He felt self-conscious enough as a weird lanky blond guy trying to play soul. (Rack, the blues rock band, had been white and mostly British.)

Lona Walsh looked at him through the glass of the sound booth and asked, "Can you repeat that?"

He was afraid everyone would laugh at him for being stupid, but he didn't think they'd fire him, so he whispered his improvisation.

"That's what it needed! Something simple and just right."

Those weren't, however, the words she would refer to in the liner notes.

They went out for just-friends drinks after that recording session. She was gorgeous, with that gorgeous voice, but she was engaged.

"So, Blondie," she said, after the first round, "you ever go through a breakup that haunts you the rest of your life?"

"Why do you ask?" he asked warily.

"One, you've got sad eyes. Two, you came up with that line. And, three, I am having serious doubts about this solo album."

"I think it's going great!" he said sincerely. "And you were always the best part of the Taffetas."

"Aww, you're sweet, but what if it was what the other girls brought out in me and the magic isn't there on my own? I mean, not to knock what you and the other guys are doing in the studio."

He nodded. "I used to know a girl whose best friend got married and left town. And the girl kinda had to figure out how to be herself on her own."

"How'd she do that?"

"By trying different things and making mistakes."

Lona Walsh smiled and said, "Thanks, Blondie."

CM: There's a real subtlety but strength to your work on this album.  
LK: Well, I was learning how to be supportive in a confident way.  
AS: I tried to teach him that years before, but he was too stupid to get it.  
CM: OK, moving on....  



	5. Covering the Classics

PAUL MCCARTNEY: Many people don't understand....  
CM: So what it was like playing with McCartney?  
LK: Weird.  
CM: Weird?  
LK: Yeah, nothing against Sir Paul, but it was a weird period in both our lives. It was the summer of '71, about a year after the Beatles broke up, but before Wings really clicked. And _Wild Life_ was not a hit album.  
CM: How was it weird for you?  
LK: Well, you know, I was a former beer-truck driver from Milwaukee, and here I was at Abbey Road with a living legend who was four years younger than I was.  
AS: Still is.  


"Postcards, eh?"

After a week, Lenny was still startled by the distinctive voice, especially at that moment when he'd been lost in thought, his mind far from the bench a block from the studio. He met the famous dark hazel eyes and said, "You wanna read it?"

"Oh, no, Man, I didn't mean to invade your privacy."

"There's nothing private about a postcard."

"Well, if you're sure." Mr. McCartney did look curious.

Lenny nodded and handed the card over.

 _Laverne,  
By the time you get this, maybe you'll have had your new baby, so congratulations! Sorry I couldn't make the reunion, but maybe next time. It's trippy to be in London and remember when Shirley almost married London. Say hi to Lee and Tracy.  
Lenny_  


"Is this in code?" Mr. McCartney asked.

"No, my friend Laverne is due with her second baby this summer, but she was still planning to go to our fifteen-year high school reunion, but I'm here, so I couldn't go. And about six years ago, she and her best friend accidentally got stoned and almost married Derek and London of London's Bridges."

"Accidentally?"

"Yeah, they didn't know the brownies had pot in them. But they didn't get married, to Lee Levy and Walter Meeney retrospectively, until three and four years ago. Tracy is Laverne's first baby."

"Oh."

"Can I tell her you say hi? She's a big fan." Lenny didn't mention that Laverne identified with loudmouthed John but she thought Paul was cuter.

Paul held out his hand for the pen, so Lenny passed that over, too. Paul wrote something and then returned the pen and card.

Lenny read the sideways message and blushed a little: _Laverne, your friend is a very talented guitarist, Paul McC._

"You didn't have to say that."

Paul shrugged. "It's true and she probably already knows it."

"Laverne." Lenny coughed, even though he wasn't smoking on this smoke break. "She's good at believing in her friends."

"You must miss her."

"I haven't seen her in three years," Lenny whispered.

"Well, maybe you'll see her at the next reunion."

Lenny nodded, wondering how much Paul understood.

Then they headed back to the studio, singing "Your love, love, love, fits me like a glove, glove, glove," their break from "Love Is Strange" over.

CM: The first minute and a half, where it's just instrumental, it's real easy to pick out that Kosnowski melancholy bounce.  
LK: That's the thing about being a sessions musician. On the one hand, you have to be sort of faceless and not upstage anyone, but on the other hand, you have to have enough style for studios to keep hiring you. Plus, you have to remember, I had no plans to be some sort of "rock star," and I never imagined people would be analyzing my music decades later.  
AS: We expected to be dead by now.  
CM: Which brings me to our next number....  



	6. Fanning the Flames

[A twangy voice sings, "Smoking hot," to equally twangy guitar.]  
CM: How much of this is you?  
LK: That's a complicated question. This was, um, the summer of '72, Mockingbird, Iris, and Raccoon Studio, Nashville. That's my backup singing and my guitar, and I did write the song, but Larry Leroy Hamilton made it his own. He was doing country rock, sort of Willie Nelson outlaw country, before that broke through a year or two later.  
AS: Lenny had his usual impecunious timing of being in the right place at the wrong time.  
CM: This number is called "Nadine, Nadine (You Got Me Addicted to Nicotine)." How autobiographical is it?  
LK: That's another complicated question.  


"Please don't smoke, Lenny."

He stubbed out the just lit cigarette in the ashtray labelled _Property of Cumberland Inn._ "Sorry, Shirl, force of habit."

"You know it's bad for you."

"Is this you talking as a future doctor?"

"This is me talking as a friend."

They were still friends, despite what they'd just done.

This wasn't planned. It was just supposed to be a mini-reunion, since Lenny had skipped the one for the class of '56 last summer. And they were both living in the "Shallow South," although their adopted towns weren't exactly as close as the Kansas Cities or Minneapolis and St. Paul, or even Milwaukee and Oshkosh.

They met sort of in the middle, although Cumberland Gap National Historical Park was four hours from Nashville and seven from Annandale. Lenny planned to drive back that evening, while Shirley was going to stay overnight near the park, since she had the longer drive. After an afternoon and dinner of reminiscing, she invited him back to her hotel room. He said yes because it was his first chance to go to bed with a woman he loved since Karen, his last "college girl."

He rolled over and looked at her. "We are still friends, right, Shirl?"

She patted his arm. "Of course, Len."

"I mean, I'm not in love with you, but I do love you."

"I feel the same way about you."

"Good," he sighed in relief and snuggled up against her.

She stroked his long hair. "Oh, Leonard. You really are just a boy, aren't you?"

"I'm over a third of a century, you know."

"I know."

"Was it, was it weird after you and Squiggy, um?" When Squiggy met him at JFK after he flew back from Heathrow last summer, the first thing his friend said at the baggage carousel was, "Well, I finally bagged Shirley." Lenny was very glad that we weren't meeting Carmine until later, at the cast party for _Jesus Christ Superstar_.

"By definition, I knew that was going to be weird, before, during, and after."

"Why'd you do it?"

"Curiosity, among other emotions."

He didn't ask why she did it with him, not yet. He did say, "I don't think we should tell anyone." Not that he was ashamed, but he didn't want to complicate things.

"You're not going to put me in a song?" she teased.

He answered seriously, "I don't write songs anymore."

She stroked his cheek. "Because of Laverne?"

He ended up telling her the story of sleeping with Francine four summers before, which he still hadn't confessed to Squiggy at that point.

CM: Was this meant to be satire?  
LK: Satire?  
CM: I mean, cigarettes were one of the more benign addictions a rock musician could have in the early '70s.  
AS: Are you kidding? I was scared those cancer sticks were gonna wreck the gravy train.  
LK: It wasn't satire.  
CM: And was there really a Nadine?  
AS: All the women in his songs are composite compositions.  
LK: Anyway, we're here to talk about my sessions work.  
CM: OK, skipping over the rest of the '70s....  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm going to expand this chapter into a side story.


	7. Getting Perspective

JOHN LENNON: Strange days indeed.  
CM: You worked with all four ex-Beatles.  
LK: Yeah, I was in Ringo's All Starr Band for awhile and I was a non-Traveling Wilbury.  
CM: But there you were, in 1980, a celebrity in your own right, with a string of successful solo albums, and you agreed to be a sessions musician again.  
LK: For John Lennon. I mean, I would've washed his windows if he asked.  
AS: And he paid for us and our families to fly out to New York. I wasn't gonna pass that up.  
CM: So what was Lennon like?  
LK: The wisest man I ever met.  
AS: Ahem.  
LK: Excepted company of course presented.  


Lenny stood on the roof of the Hit Factory, gazing out at the city, wishing he hadn't quit smoking.

"Don't jump, Kosmik!"

The familiar, slightly nasal voice startled him, even after a few weeks, but Lenny turned slowly and carefully. "I was just admiring the view."

"Yeah, there's no place like New York." Lenny knew by now that John could be incredibly un-sarcastic about places, people, and things he loved.

Lenny nodded, not wanting to share his mixed feelings about the Big Apple.

"So where are the wife, kiddies, and Squiggies today?"

"Visiting Laverne's relatives in Brooklyn." He pointed vaguely in what he hoped was the right direction. (The song he'd been working on for his next solo album, which he set aside when he got the call from John, had the couplet, "You can read a map, I can heed the gap.")

"You didn't wanna go?"

He frowned. "Her family always teases me about not getting her pregnant yet, and we've been married three years."

"Do you want to get her pregnant?"

"I've wanted that for twenty years," he confessed.

"What does she want?"

"Well, she's already got the three kids from her first marriage, and she's forty-two."

"Yoko was forty-two when Sean was born."

"I know. And Laverne says she'd be happy either way, if we have a baby together or if we don't."

"You wanna know what I think?"

"Of course."

"This is the woman you waited your whole life for. But it's never gonna be perfect. So enjoy loving her, whether or not that makes babies. And be a good stepfather to the babies she's already got."

"I try."

"I know you do, Mate. Now come back inside and give me some of your Milwaukee groove."

CM: Is it hard for you to listen to tracks like "(Just Like) Starting Over" and "Borrowed Time"?  
LK: When it was rawer, sure. Now, well, everything is ironic at my age.  
AS: Just being alive is ironic.  
LK: I mean, yes, I'm still hit by what a loss it was, but I'm also thinking, _Oh, this is the part I screwed up and John said, "Don't worry, we'll fix it later."_  
CM: Which brings me to our final number....  



	8. Signing Off

[An acoustic guitar accompanies electronic music.]  
CM: So, why this, why now?  
LK: Well, as many of your listeners know, my stepson, Fabrizio Levy, is a musician, too, although I don't know how much credit I can take for that.  
AS: You did sing him "Itsy-Bitsy Spider" on a regular basis.  
LK: True. Anyway, we've both always resisted collaborating, although we have a good relationship. Or maybe we have a good relationship because we never collaborated before. But it felt like time to risk it.  


"How do you feel today?"

She coughed. "Like crap."

"Oh, Honey, I wish I could hold you!"

"Don't be stupid, Len. You think I want you catching this crud?"

He was glad he'd called rather than FaceTimed, as much as he missed her face. She wouldn't be able to see him cry this time, although she'd probably hear it in his voice. "How are the nurses working out?"

"They're nice, but what happened to my request for hunky male nurses?"

They had been 100% faithful to each other from the night of their twentieth-year high school reunion, but they were honest about liking to look.

"None of 'em wanna look after an old bat like you."

She laughed until she coughed again.

"I'm sorry, Baby!"

"Don't apologize for making me laugh. It's the only reason I've kept you around all these years."

"Vernie, what am I gonna do if you...?"

"If I go, you're gonna be strong for the kids and grandkids and Shirley and everybody."

"How am I supposed to be strong without you?"

"Len, you're eighty-two years old and you've survived things that give me nightmares. Oh, that reminds me. I had a dream, a nice dream, about you last night."

"Oh yeah?"

"Quit your leering, Old Man. We were just dancing to the jukebox at the Pizza Bowl."

"That does sound nice."

"Len, can you play a song for me?"

"Which one?"

"You know the one."

"OK, goodbye, Laverne."

"Goodbye, Sweet Lenny."

He hung up the landline phone and got his acoustic guitar. He carefully sat down on their bedroom floor. He tried to play and sing loud enough for her to hear him in the basement, knowing that his electric would've been louder and his voice was a little choky. He also knew that she wanted his basic self.

"I've heard it said that life is dumb...."

LK: ...So obviously that's something else we have in common. But it's not just us of course, which is why we're doing this.  
CM: And the proceeds on the downloads of the _Groundhog_ album all go to the cause?  
AS: Again, I'm getting ten percent of nothin'.  
CM: Yeah, but you've still got your cut of all those sweet "Sugar, Sugar" residuals.  
AS: Thank You, Jesus.  
CM: And on that note, this has been Clarissa Meadows....  
LK: Lenny Kosnowski....  
AS: And the one and only Andrew Squiggman.  
ALL THREE: Signing off!  



End file.
